Corrections_Today_Fall_2025_Vol.87_No.3

CORRECTIONAL CHAPLAIN PERSPECTIVES

expected to go beyond competency and exhibit proficiency in spiritual concepts and applications. Spiritual or pastoral care and counselors are the central health care professionals on this level. Spiritual care specialists have an expert level of knowledge and skills. Their expertise is evident in the level of education and experience required to achieve specialization. Chaplains are the spiritual care experts on the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary health care teams. 2 Mastery of the spiritual care prin ciples and practices can be achieved when the helper uses direct intention and focus for ten to twenty thou sand hours of time to improve his or her abilities. Neurocriminologists, neurotheologians and other clinical ly-trained clergy would qualify as masters of spiritual healthcare. The bio-psycho-social-spiritual care continuum is a well-established holistic model to understand the interprofessional and multi-disci plinary coordination of services. Physicians and psychiatrists serve in the biological or physical domain. Psychologists and counselors serve in the psychological domain. The social domain is the purview of social workers and other human services helpers. Chaplains serve alongside these healthcare helpers as the experts and specialists in the spiritual domain. The care con tinuum has two poles (salutogenesis and pathogenesis) and between the two poles are the five main health care branches: health promotion, education, prevention, protection and cure. Salutogenesis constitutes the study of health and wellness, and pathogenesis encompasses the study of illness and disease. 3

Salutogenesis has its own ori entation and model. Central to the approach is the sense of coherence, or how people perceive and respond to life’s challenges. The sense of co herence involves comprehensibility, meaningfulness and manageability. Practitioners of salutogenesis strive to help people understand that challenges in the environment are structured, predictable, and can be explained. They can foster the real ization that the outcomes of dealing with challenges in a healthy way outweigh the inertia or deleterious effect that can spring from avoid ing or not engaging the challenge. Salutogenic practice also includes inviting people to recognize and em ploy available internal and external resources to meet their challenges. Chaplains help people understand and embrace the challenges of life by assisting them to make sense of (comprehensibility), handle (manageability) and benefit from (meaningfulness) their challenges.

study of illness and disease. 4 Chap laincy contains some of the same active ingredients as salutogenesis. Chaplains help people understand and embrace the challenges of life by assisting them to make sense of (comprehensibility), handle (manageability) and benefit from (meaningfulness) their challenges. Forensic settings, such as jails, prisons and detention facilities, are generally guided by the principles of custody, care and control. 5 All of the healthcare disciplines and branches, including chaplaincy, are contained in the care domain. Chaplaincy is an essential part of evidenced-based care for insti tutionalized people because the role and impact of the practice of spiritual care is meaningfully measured in changes in thinking, emotional regulation, behavior and social connections of the recipients of chaplain spiritual care services. 6 Chaplains practice the fundamen tals of salutogenesis by helping institutionalized persons discover the comprehensibility, manage ability and meaningfulness of the challenges that they experience in the forensic settings. 7 When chap lains incorporate and integrate principles from other salutogenic disciplines, such as conciliation and conflict resolution, peer sup port and prevention, reentry and recovery, psychiatric rehabilitation, community health and the other coaching crafts, they expand the efficacy and effectiveness of their helping interventions. People in forensic settings experience better health outcomes as they address antisocial proclivities as a routine part of self-care. They experience

The fundamental theories and practices of chaplaincy correspond better with the study of health and wellness (salutogenesis) than the

Fall 2025 | Corrections Today

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